Project managers are responsible for tracking the amount of time individual team members spend on particular tasks of a project. By accurately tracking time spent on tasks, project managers are able to calculate labor costs associated with implementing the project. Project managers are also able to identify potential inefficiencies in implementing the project by comparing actual time being spent on a task to the time allocated to the task. Project managers are able to utilize the tracked time spent on the project to make adjustments to the project plan as the project is being implemented. Project managers are also able to utilize the information to more accurately plan future projects. Existing project management tools, such as Microsoft's Team Timesheet for Outlook™ program, enable a project manager to track time spent on a project. These tools, however, rely on users manually inputting time information. Manually inputting time information can lead to errors and thus inaccurate time information.
Known business process automation tools, such as IBM's Rational Team Concert™ program, WebSphere Process Server™ program, WebSphere Business Modeler™ program, and Websphere Lombardi™ program, enable a project manager to define process activities, allocate resources to the activities, and collect data on the progress of the activities. The known business process automation tools track actual time spent to complete process steps and compute labor costs associated with performing a selected process. Known business process automation tools, however, do not automatically track time spent on a process by an individual team member. A human synchronizing data generated by the business process automation tool with data tracked by a project management tool is time consuming and error-prone. A human synchronizing the data when team members work in multiple disconnected environments is more time consuming and more error-prone.